mostly broken hearts
by daughter-of-october
Summary: [Characters: State Alchemists] # Summary: It happened again and again. # Companion: 'like diamonds in the sky'


**_mostly broken hearts_**

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**Characters:** State Alchemists

**Summary:** It happened again and again.

**Companion:** 'like diamonds in the sky'

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To be a state alchemist was far more than most people and even most of them realised. To be a state alchemist seemed to be easily defined: a gifted alchemist who had a fancy name, a huge income and served the army as Human Weapon in case of a war.

_Easy_.

Only that this was not everything because any alchemist had a reason and a different personality.

**Fullmetal** travelled to realise his goal of returning his brother into his old body and would never kill – how he would serve as a Human Weapon was behind everyone who looked a little bit closer and realised that the boy was really still a child and that it had been wrong that someone had allowed him to join in first place. Then again, behind the golden eyes was more determination that behind most adult's eyes and so maybe, this was why.

**Sewing Life** had been always an alchemist before everything else. He had never been a husband or a father with the same fervour he shown for being an alchemist. Any true scientist felt sick for being compared to him because Sewing Life was not one of them. Yes, he had the drive to make new discoveries but the methods he used were enough to make normal people feel sick. The only regrettable thing about his death was that he had not seen his faults, not even when the Ishbalan avenger had treated him with the same kindness he had treated everyone else.

**Mermaid** had been infamous about two things in her entire career: the way she had 'accidentally' caused heavy water damage to Central Headquarters upon hearing that she was truly called Mermaid Alchemist and the fact that she was probably the only human being who was entirely unafraid of Major General Armstrong – probably because she had seen worse. Bradley had changed her name later on, making her the Wave Alchemist.

**Strong Arm** had decided on this path because he had truly believed into the ideals of the army his ancestors had already served willingly and because he wanted to use his fists for a good case. Ishbal was the rough end of this dream and the begin of a life of despair, a life where alchemy became the epitome of his failure his self-hatred, a self-hatred he covered by mentioning his glorious and victorious ancestors again and again – and kept going anyway.

**Silver Hands** was Strong Arm's exact opposite. She had not served in a war but she carried the burden of a family that had brought nothing but death and destruction for centuries. Her own hands were cleaned, had only touched the blood of her comrades when she had healed them but they did not seem unstained to her. She could feel the sticky crimson liquid that had been shed along the centuries any day, no matter how many times she scrubbed her hands until they were raw and sore. She did not hide behind her family's fame. She had thrown this name away.

**Flame** had had a dream once, the dream to change the country to the better. And even in Ishbal, he remembered this goal. He did not despair as much as his peers after the war even though he matured as well. He learned – and his aide supported this realisation – that truly everything in life had to be paid for and that one's happiness sometimes came at the high price of another's misery. But even though he did not like this and wanted to change it at the very second he realised it, he had to go a long way before he finally could change what was in his way.

**Cerulean Rose** had been Red Lotus's equal in many ways. She had been as bloodthirsty and sadistic and just like him, she had enjoyed playing vicious mind games with her helpless victims. But unlike him, she had never felt bound by a rule. Her kills had rarely been aesthetic and beautiful and she had been even crueller whenever she had seen that a victim was far weaker than her hence her unofficial title as Empress of the Overkill. The reason for her cruelty had never been uncovered and when she had been killed in Ishbal due to her own recklessness and tendency to underestimate her victims, many had been relieved because she had been the number one on the list of state alchemists who might turn against the government.

**Red Lotus** was the only one to think of Cerulean Rose as a loss for the army. To him, her kills had been nearly as aesthetically pleasing as his own and her cruel mind games had often inspired his own. But even though she mirrored his worst attributes and partially even surpassed him on terms of cruelty, he had also found her philosophy lacking. Unlike him, she had not had any standards when it came to her enemies and had wasted time on victims far beneath her level. His nihilism and her fatalism had clashed again and again – without having found a solution because she died before the war was over. He appreciated the way she died, a scowl firmly in place and scratching 'Fate always wins' into the ground. He considered doing the same when he died but failed to do so for two reasons: first of all, Pride ate him semi-alive and secondly, he had never believed in fate.

**Silver** had been an oddity on Ishbal's battlefields. He had been the only one – but Cerulean Rose and Crimson Lotus – to truly enjoy the battle, the fight over life and death. Being a close-range combatant, he had looked down onto the snipers and his fellow alchemists who had fought from a safer, longer range. But he had been called out on it by Lightening who had reminded him of the traps he had conjured all over the premise, traps she used to have electricity running through the entire desert, destroying the few technical equipment the Ishbalans had. She said that Silver was a coward despite his thirst for blood and battles – and he _knew_ that she was right.

**Breeze Soul** and **Breeze Heart** had never been understood by anyway. They were not in for the money or the fame. Both of them had been born into a life where everything they wanted was handed to them on a silver plate. But maybe was this the reason why they had chosen a career within the military, maybe they wanted to work hard for what they got.

**Freezing** was more or less the second most unpredictable state alchemist after Lightening and this meant something. No one ever understood why he had joined the army he despised so much in first place but it was to be assumed that he had sold his soul for money and the chances to do his research in better laboratories than a normal person could afford.

**Iron Blood** watched the war with disdain. At one hand, he was a soldier to the core and he accepted that sometimes, war was necessary to uphold peace and happiness for the civilians who were under the military's protection. At the other hand, he often wondered whether such a massacre was truly necessary and whether it was truly the only way to have a happy life. He was – not unlike his more malicious colleagues Crimson Lotus and Cerulean Rose – bound by a certain mindset and yet, he could hardly be more different from them. Iron Blood was a man of honour, a man who valued his promises and would walk through hell to keep them. And so he went.

**Scarlet** was among the few state alchemists who simply quit without giving an explanation and without being involved in the war. One day, she simply had not arrived at the hospital to work and after a few days without any signal from her, her superior sent out a few soldiers to investigate. Scarlet's home was untouched, only a set of clothes was missing. The soldiers found no trace that might have indicated that she had been taken by force and so they concluded, that the medical alchemist had simply left for one reason or another, maybe because she had grown tired of her work or the way she was treated. She was a mystery that became a legend.

**Crystal** had once been a boy just like Fullmetal. He had been full of dreams and had the ambition to proof the world that he was worth far more than they believed. Growing up in an orphanage, he had learned very early that nothing in life was given for free and that he had to work hard to make things happen. But then, when he started as a state alchemist, he wanted to make a difference and not unlike his colleague, he also never accepted money for anything he did. What started as an attempt to give at least something to the world became an obsession after Ishbal and his disappearance because he had so much to atone for.

**Lightening** had been capable of causing destruction since she had been sixteen and she had been the same kind of rich little girl as Breeze Soul. She too had never had a real reason to join the army but the fact that there was something she had to prove. She had to prove that she was good, no, that she was better than those before her. She was part of another family of alchemists and she neither hated nor glorified them. They had been simply been there before she had come. And the only thing she had to do now was to prove that she was _at least_ as good as them.

**Element** saw them all. Too old, too experience and too high-ranked to serve in Ishbal but highly aware of the terror his peers had seen there, he refrained from judging them. He did not think that he was allowed the judge them because it could have been him as well, shedding blood and destroying hundreds of lives within the blink of an eye. He watched how they struggled, how they tried to find their old selves again – only to realise that it was long gone. He knew that it could have been him and that only luck was the reason why it was not like this.


End file.
